Not a local COVID-19 update - yet

There's apparently some sort of technical issue with the Commonwealth's COVID-19 dashboard. The expected raw data download for today is not available, and the dashboard webpage has the following notice:

PLEASE NOTE: Due to a technical issue, the interactive dashboard is not available at this time. This dashboard will be posted as soon as possible.

Now, it does appear as though the data has been updated in the Tableau dashboard - it's currently showing 66 newly confirmed deaths, 1,553 newly reported confirmed cases, and 102,052 newly reported confirmed tests. However, without the raw data, I can't generate the wall-o-text; so I'll just wait on that one.

Adventures in vaccination

Early in the morning on Tuesday (March 2), I somewhat idly brought up the state's vaccine appointment finder (https://vaxfinder.mass.gov/), expecting it to show its typical utter lack of appointments available. To my surprise, it was showing a small number of slots open at the Gillette Stadium site - presumably because some folks had cancelled their appointments for one reason or another. After several attempts, each of which brought me to a page showing a day's worth of unavailable times, I was able to find an appointment for the next morning (!) at 9:48.

So I toodled down to Foxborough bright and early Wednesday morning. The various online mapping services indicated that it was marginally faster for me to head east and take MA-128/I-90 to US-1 south, rather than head west and take I-495 to US-1 north, to get to Gillette. There are two vaccination sites at Gillette, and my appointment was at the "west" clinic (in the stadium in the Putnam Investments club). Traffic was non-existent, and parking was plentiful. One thing that didn't work perfectly; the directions told me to take the P6 entrance to Gillette, and I couldn't see any signage for P6 from US-1. (Instead, I saw signs for the P9 entrance at a traffic light, made a U-turn onto US-1 north, and took the P8 entrance that the directions specified for northbounders.)

Apart from that minor bit of navigational irritation, though, things went very smoothly. There was a very short line waiting to get into the site, but there were plenty of staff keeping things flowing. They had plenty of check-in stations; basically all I had to do was show one person the registration email and the completed health questionaire on my phone, and then I was heading up the escalator to the vaccination stations proper. Again, there was effectively no waiting, and I got my Moderna shot (and official CDC vaccination card) with no hassles. I spent most of the fifteen-minute observation period signing up (on my cell phone) for my second shot on March 31 - same location, same time - and was on my way home shortly after ten AM.

I haven't noticed any side effects from the shot; I'm going to plan on not being so lucky after the second dose. On the other hand, by mid-April I should be "fully vaccinated" - and in a position to do things like, say, visit my mom.

(Originally posted on March 11. Backdated to March 3, which is when I thought I'd posted this originally. Apparently I didn't.)